Graveney extension stream

[swlondon24]

DD seems to have scored well enough in the Wandsworth test that she would very likely qualify for the Graveney extension stream. I have read their website/brochure/policies but can't really find detailed info on how it works in practice, can any current parents enlighten me?

When they join in y7, would their class / tutor group be a mix of all children or are they in a class of other children in the extension stream? Are they mixed for sports/arts/music for example or is it a stream that would not mix with the other streams in lessons?

Do they follow the same or a different curriculum? When I look at the curriculum info online, it just talks about the general ks3 curriculum but I can't see if there is a different curriculum / additional enrichment options or what the difference is supposed to be in this stream?

If there are 70 children in the extension stream, would that mean there are two classes of 35 or are they in 3 classes mixed with a few other children?

Please note I have no problem with mixing, just want to understand how it works especially as the intake of 280 kids sounds daunting. I just wonder how they get to know each other and how overwhelming it might be.

The kids are with the same form group throughout school
In Y7 if you are in extension the rest of your form group will also be extension - they will be together for all their classes irrc
The whole school studies the same stuff initially
Later there are additional subjects available after school maybe at lunch

It's 70 test places but there are four extension tutor groups, they're big groups so that's around say 130 extension kids in total, of whom only 70 got in on the test. The other 60 are (from kids within catchment and siblings etc) the 'next best' in WT and/or kids with less strong WT scores but good SATs/other primary school creds.

The four extension tutor groups are all equal. Kids do everything with their own tutor groups but will come into contact with other forms in PE, PSHE, and so on.

Individual subject streaming starts at the beginning of yr 8 (maths only initially). The top maths set(s) will be made up of mostly but not exclusively kids from extension.

Both the WT and primary school creds are fairly blunt tools for assessing academic potential so quite a few kids get demoted from/promoted to extension, midway through and at the end of year 8 - perhaps around five demotions/promotions per extension tutor group wouldn't be unusual. Some of the promotions will be the kids of immigrants who started out with poor English but are catching up. The demotions are usually disproportionately drawn from kids who were borderline extension cases, so often catchment rather than test kids.

Everyone basically starts out studying the same subjects but even in year 7 there are easier/harder version of exam papers and so on, as at many schools the kids ultimately end up doing slightly different numbers of GCSEs and so on [combined vs separate sciences being one example], the starting tutor groups basically put kids on a pathway to study smaller or larger numbers of GCSEs.

• typo in the above - I meant midway through and at the end of year 7.

amazingly helpful, thank you both!

There’s lots of opinions about the school but consensus seems to be that the Extension set kids ‘always do really well’
But Friend at north London school has a very similar ‘25% pupils admitted from a hard test that over a thousand kids take’ and academically their overall results as a school really are a level ABOVE Graveney’s

How to explain this discrepancy?
Given all the chat about the school you could infer that Graveney isn’t doing that well with its non-extension kids. Though another explanation is that it’s not actually doing that well full stop, or perhaps sitting on its laurels a little?
Are any of these other criticisms valid?
Music and arts seem more valued/Sports offering not that strong for such a big school?
Extension stream is less diverse? (there’s a petition from 2020). Some teachers only teach extension stream?
Parent teacher association seems not that active?

I’m not trying to be negative here at all, but there’s enough noise about the school to raise concerns.
I imagine many really smart kids are having a great time and academically, so I’m also not sure any Extension stream parent is going to actively criticise the school, but can anyone shed any light?

What light do you want to see?
The schools most recent Ofsted inspection graded it outstanding
The Progress 8 scores have been positive

The extension kids would probably do well anywhere tbh

What is the pastoral care like?

I was checking the data on the DoE website and the progress achievement data for the "previous high attainers" seem to be even higher than for other highly rated outstanding state schools (Greycoat Hospital, Oratory and the like) so it does seem like they do very well in the extension stream, maybe even better than if they were at other outstanding comprehensives?

So if one looks at say GCSE Attainment 8 on the gov site it’s 61.8, (but the similar intake unnamed north London school is actually 71).
A good measure for the more able is grade 7-9 at GCSE which a lot of schools publish themselves. Graveney last year 46% which is impressive of course. Nearby non-selective schools Bolingbroke, Chestnut Grove also hit about 40% on this measure.
Sutton grammars hit 75-95% on that depending on whether they are mostly selective or fully selective, so let’s use 90% for Graveney entrants via the year6 test, a reasonable assumption?
So if Graveney test cohort is grammar school equivalent then 0.2590+0.75R =46 implying that R is 31%. So this percentage of 7-9 at GCSE for the rest of the school, three quarters of the intake is a slightly disappointing 31%?

(to underline the point the whole school percentage at the unnamed north London school is a whopping 67%)

Why don't you just name the North London school?

I do of course take the point that A8 score for high prior attainment entrants is a seemingly impressive 74.9 (and P8 0.56)
It was 72.4 at Bolingbroke (p8 0.78) and 74 (p8 0.69) at Chestnut Grove, which are non-selective
(at the unnamed north London school it is 77.9 for this cohort, with P8 0.66)

So the extension kids probably should do well wherever they go is certainly true but actually is their P8 is slightly disappointing?

for context at Sutton grammar Wilson’s school where they are pretty much all prior high attainers A8 is 86! And P8 is also 1.3. Wow!

I guess I’m making the assumption that getting the gravely score in the year6 test (apparently top 3-4%) is a similar level to the Sutton grammars, but that seems not unreasonable

I am not sure it is as selective as Wilson or HBS, it's true they have to come in the top 5% of test takers but almost any Wandsworth child takes the Wandsworth test, including many who have no plans of going to grammar school, they just take it as a banding test. So I don't think they are comparable to Wilson applicants. I am guessing getting into the top 5% in the Wandsworth test is similar to getting into the top 20-30% (but not necessarily top 10%) of Wilson / HBS / QEB applicants. We can't know for sure but that is just my guess or my impression after seeing the type of kids / families queueing for the grammar school exams (Tiffin & co) vs the kids queueing for the Wandsworth test (which were just all normal kids from the area going to all sorts of local schools).

That’s an interesting observation but I don’t know how you’ve generated your numbers.

As the year 6 test is age standardised , Graveney entrance is supposed to start at top 3-4%
I heard only approximately 65-80% of Wandsworth kids take the year6 test since it became non-compulsory last year. I was surprised it had dropped by this much. Anecdotally, most but not all, friends who intend to go independent took it any way, but didn’t focus on the annoyingly specific parameters, especially timing.
Also anecdotally I know several, by any measure, bright kids who did not achieve the Graveney score because they did not practice and that aspect much. I cld imagine the Graveney test passers may be a curious mix of the
quite bright but very well-drilled and then the truly bright (about 0.5% of applicants score maximum SAS in either paper based on an 2014 FOI request).

More importantly the waiting list cycles through at least 50 kids from offer day to end summer so I guess it moves from top 3-4% to top 7%?

I guess the grammars with their two stage process really do find the kids who are already-academically-bright as opposed to ones with the apparent potential that VR and NVR is supposed to measure (ha!)
(though the grammars e.g. the Wilson’s also can have a huge math/stem bias - you can see this from their leavers destinations. I thought ‘is this just because they are all boys?’ but then I learned they add their math+English entrance scores which will obviously the favour stronger-in-math kids from the get go)

I think I might be kinda answering my own question here about the Extension set, either its makeup is perhaps not quite as strong as one thinks?

The top few percent of the Wandsworth test scorers will be competing against some very well prepped private school kids plus 800+ out of borough applicants who have chosen to put their hat in the ring. This is for around 35 places for boys (70 total), minus siblings who make the grade.

Wilsons applicants will be sitting (and scored/standardised against) candidates for Sutton and WCGS for a total of several hundred places for the boys sitting that test.

Not totally sure of numbers sitting each, I think around 1800 in total for the three grammars and 3-4000 sitting WT?

Both pretty competitive!

Good numbers

1. The 70 selective places at Graveney take precedence over every other category in Graveney’s admission criteria (then: looked after, siblings, social or medical need, children of staff, distance), so yeah if siblings do well they get in on test (and I guess will want to do so to get into extension streams)
   Can you tell it used to be a grammar school? (it used to take a larger proportion selective like 120 until local resident campaign reduced it?)

2. the only actual number I know is that 3400-3500 kids took the year6 test in 2014, back when it was compulsory for children attending Wandsworth primary schools. Since the roll numbers are higher (y6 peaking this year or last I think) because of the birth rate increase up until 2013, but year6 test is no longer compulsory since last year. My guess around 3000 max now?

3. Had idea how many take the grammar tests recently but found stats for Sutton Schools and SGS for entry in 2017:
   “2439 boys took the selective eligibility test or entry to any of the selective boys’ schools in Sutton in September 2017.
   917 boys took the second stage test for admission to Sutton Grammar School for the 135 available places for entry in September 2016.
   746 of the boys tested were deemed to be of selective ability and of these a valid application via the Common Application Form was received from 645 of them.”
   That is boys-only so reasonable to infer about 5000 boys and girls take the Sutton grammar Tests (have seen that number elsewhere ) and there’s ultimately around 750 entry total places for both across 5-6 schools but obviously you don’t just casually take the grammar school test vs quite a few casually take the Wandsworth year6.

happy to be corrected on any of this guesswork.

but yes both pretty competitive as you say!

I suppose I see attainment 8 scores for any school as completely irrelevant given that by a huge distance the best predictor of these is the standard of the intake.

Progress 8 scores are getting closer to meaning something but they can strongly favour schools with a high proportion of 'fresh off the boat' immigrants, who inevitably progress a lot more on average than native speakers.

I know a decent number of kids who flunked the Wandsworth test but got into a Sutton grammar and also a decent number the other way round. They test quite different things, there's a fair correlation between the two but by no means a perfect one. I suppose my 'gut feel' based on nothing really tangible at all is that the weakest of Graveney's selective intake, say numbers 60 something of the 70, is probably most years weaker than the bottom seventh of the Sutton grammars' intakes, especially Wilsons - or maybe not, I would guess that on average the Sutton grammars' intake has been worked a lot harder at an early age and may have less room for improvement. Pure speculation on my part.

In the end I would choose between the two based on travel time & whether you like co-ed or not.

OP: Many many families from a huge radius take the WT with a view to getting into Graveney. They have 3 test centres on different dates.

just a thing to note on progress/attainment scores when you compare to Wilsons/SG. Graveney only has 70 "superselective" places but there are 120 pupils in the extension stream (they fill four classes and mix the "superselective" kids with siblings or other high achieving pupils with strong Sats/school reports). the DoE website even lists 130 high prior attainers in their data, so a few from the second stream (I think it is called the enrichment stream) are also high prior attainers.

there are 280 children in the year group overall. So when you look at overall data, only about one quarter of the children are from the superselective intake. Even the high prior attainers data on compare-schools is just over half superselecive plus other high achievers who werent part of the 70 but got in via catchment and were classed as high achievers.

I agree to some degree that bright children do well anywhere (unless they end up in a terrible place) but there is potentially something to be said for a high achieving peer group, wide subject choice, enrichment opportunities etc which may not be available at an average comp.

When looking at Graveney results I have only been using the
quarter of intake as ‘super selective’, as this is top 4% initially and maybe top 7% by end of summer. To unpack that - the WT is two tests with a SAS 141 maximum each so 282 max total, (distribution 100, s.d 15).So 255 means approx avg 127 in each test which is 9th stanine, which is top 4%
BUT High Prior Attainment is a MUCH broader band.
This means you have scored above 110, in your KS2 SATS (where 100 is the expected standard and this time the max is 120) But this is a Scaled Score NOT a Standardised Age Score.
National average for this 110+ band in say Mathematics is 23% and a strong primary school will be getting 50% of their kids to this level. If you look at an actual paper you will see they SATs are very much a curriculum-based benchmark.

So in the above GCSE 7-9 grade comparison for example I’ve only used the 25% test intake as guaranteed very high achievers. If I had used the 120/280 so 42% of intake in this assumption ( which I feel is wrong) then the GCSE results for the other 58% would look worse

It would be a nice idea that Graveney was using the WT which is purely VR and NVR to find rough diamonds I.e. v.bright kids who have so far been ‘under-schooled’ but I don’t know anyone who thinks this. You definitely need to practice the tests and in particular the timing on the tests especially NVR.

I wld agree a real take-away observation is how similar the A8 scores actually are across many schools for the High Prior Attainment group!

I think there's a meritocratic element to VR/NVR, much more so than e.g. testing year 6 kids on year 7 curriculum topics per many traditional 11+ tests. But I suspect that e.g. speed and cost of marking play a much bigger role in explaining the choice. The only genuinely prep-proof test (short of some futuristic setup in which intellectual horsepower is measured via electrodes on the head) would be one whose format and content changed so drastically every year that any attempt at prep was futile. And that kind of testing would never be cost efficient for a council that prides itself on having the lowest council tax in etc.

There’s not a school entrance system in the world that MC parents haven’t learned to game.
I agree the intent of the Wandsworth year6 test is to use VR and NVR to find raw ability, however it’s been much pretty same test for at least 15 years with actually a reasonably narrow range of NVR topics (e.g. no spatial) and hard time pressure so very trainable

Yes, I definitely agree it's, although definitely correlated with native wit, also highly teachable. My guesstimate would be that the difference between a kid who's never seen such a test before and a kid with identical smarts who's been really thoroughly drilled is easily 10 points on the 'up to 141' scale and might in extreme cases even be double that.

Just to comment on the remarks above about music being more valued. Graveney is incredibly unusual in having a fast track music stream that takes GCSE and A level music early and in valuing the musicians for the highly focused individuals that they are. (Try playing 2 instruments at Grade 8 and adding that level of practice to your homework etc.) They send a good number to Oxbridge and the top end of RG music departments and have at least one alumn who is an Oxbridge music don. It is frankly remarkable that a state school can achieve this. It should be celebrated not sniped at.

Thank you for the information on Graveney’s music success. That certainly sounds impressive and no sniping here. I hope you can appreciate my friendly and polite query as to how current is your data, because:

On Graveney’s own website quotes this:
”The Sutton Trust report in 2011 placed us in the top 100 Comprehensive schools in the UK for Oxbridge acceptances, and comparison of data released by Oxford and Cambridge Universities in 2016 shows that our acceptance rates to these two highly competitive universities continue to exceed rates for the maintained sector. Since 2010, 87 Graveney students have won places at Oxford or Cambridge, an average of nine students a year”
(This website has perhaps not been updated in a while?)

You can also see 2023 leavers destinations of 314 students including 4 to Oxford this year and 5 to Cambridge so very in line with the average of 9 (which represents 2.8%).
Also in this list just 2 students out of 314 reading Music related subjects.

Now I dislike Oxbridge admittance as any kind of measure, but perhaps it does tell you something about aspiration I guess - if we are going to go there why don’t we look at Oxbridge number this year as a %age of leavers?
Chestnut Grove 2 out of 85 (so 2.4%)
Bolingbroke 4 from ~100 (so 4%)
Elms Academy 3 from just 31 Alevel entrants (so 9%!)
Wilsons school got 29 from 170 so 17% (rather less Arts & languages though as discussed).

Frankly while 9 students into Oxbridge is impressive (and impressively consistent) perhaps 2.8% is less so?
(I definitely appreciate one should not look at individual years but how a school does over time especially when the data points are a small number)

One can find top 100 schools for Oxbridge easily, but it’s still mostly independents (but less so hoorah) but seems hard to find a current list of top 100 state schools.

I know both Cambridge and Oxford publish their applications and acceptance rate from every UCAS centre annually, which is useful to cut through any schools vague PR claims
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/statistics

https://public.tableau.com/views/UniversityofOxford-UCASApplyCentre2022/UCASApplyCentre?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&:showTabs=y&:showVizHome=no&:mobile=true

You can see here that Graveney is very consistent in making 15-25 applications to both places most years. Much more than the other (albeit much smaller) sixth forms, except Ashcroft Technology

Interesting to see the qualifying score to gain an offer in the selective stream dropped from 254 to 250 this year. Seems like it should be comparatively easier to get one of the 70 selective places this year.